


Handle With Care

by IrenkaFeralKitty



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: X-Wing Series - Aaron Allston & Michael Stackpole
Genre: Gen, Tycho is feeling depressed, Wes puts on good manners, What it means to be a friend, friendship fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-23
Updated: 2019-02-23
Packaged: 2019-11-04 05:59:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17892839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IrenkaFeralKitty/pseuds/IrenkaFeralKitty
Summary: The stark, unrelenting Imperial lines of the Lusankya’s corridors seemed to press in around him, silently taunting Tycho with his scattered memories of being tortured and imprisoned years earlier.





	Handle With Care

**Author's Note:**

> Just a random story idea. Unbeta'd.

Most days, being stationed on the _Lusankya_ didn’t bother Tycho. The prison levels had been stripped, cleaned, and decontaminated. Luke had even stopped by with a few of his Jedi trainees and worked with Corran to cleanse its Force presence. There were no remnants of that dark, miserable space that he’d been imprisoned in left to haunt him, and yet…

A dull ache had settled behind Tycho’s eyes by the time he left his quarters. He’d been staring at the walls for hours without relief and was now on the hunt for some kind of distraction that would finally let him sleep.

The stark, unrelenting Imperial lines of the _Lusankya_ ’s corridors seemed to press in around him, silently taunting him with his scattered memories of being tortured and imprisoned years earlier. The lights seemed overbright and left him blinking away their harsh glare.

For a brief moment, Tycho pondered searching out Wedge and seeking the comfort of his best friend’s presence. But that wouldn’t be right. They were all under stress right now, especially Wedge. He’d gone through an abbreviated Fleet Command training course before taking command of the _Lusankya_ , but Tycho was well aware of how difficult Wedge was finding the transition to holding ranks in two branches of the New Republic military.

Instead, Tycho let his path take him to the small pilot lounge set aside for the Rogues. While unlikely, it was possible that another insomniac would be present and able to provide some much needed company.

The lights were dim in the room when Tycho entered, but not completely off. More importantly, a pair of legs were propped up against the back of one of the couches, a pair of worn black boots peeking up over the top and crossed at the ankle.

Tycho raised an eyebrow. He recognized those boots.

“Keeping late hours, Wes?” he asked as he walked around the couch and perched on the arm facing the other pilot.

Startled, Wes looked up from his datapad. “Oh, hey,” he said, fingers flashing in an aborted wave. “Just trying to get through this thing Hobbie gave me.”

“Training materials?”

“A really shitty book.”

Wes grinned when a snort escaped Tycho. “After about the fifth or so book he recommended that I didn’t immediately like, we made a deal. As long as I read at least twenty percent of the book, I can put it down and never touch it again without him complaining.”

“So now you’re just slogging through what’s left?” Tycho asked. He shook his head in amusement when Wes nodded. “I’m not sure I could force myself to do that.”

“It’s kind of a cost benefit analysis,” Wes explained. Glancing down at his datapad, he deactivated it and tossed it onto the table in front of the couch, then folded his hands behind his head. “I have to weigh how bad the book is against how annoying Hobbie’ll be about it if I don’t reading twenty percent of it and he finds out.”

“Again, I’m not sure I could do all that,” Tycho said. Leaning forward, he swatted at Wes’s feet. “I thought I told you to clean those.”

“You remember all those mud pits on Suoki 7, right?” Lifting his feet up into the air, Wes stared at his boots in apparent fascination. “I’ve tried three different cleansers so far and I haven’t been able to get these stains out.” Sighing, Wes swung his feet down and pushed himself upright. He eyed Tycho for a moment, briefly looking like he was going to say something, before instead holding his tongue.

“You should plan to hit your bunk soon. Day shift isn’t all that far away,” Tycho said after a few moments of silence.

Again, there was a brief flash of something on Wes’s face before it vanished. Instead of spinning out his more common brand of nonsense, Wes nodded instead, grabbing his datapad as he stood and stowed it in one of his oversized uniform pockets.

“You’re one to talk,” Wes said teasingly. “You’re just as guilty of staying up late as I am. Wedge call you to talk strategy? Or is this secret colonel business?” He nodded solemnly. “This is why I refuse to be promoted to a higher rank than major. If I wanted to be skulking about all the time on secret missions, I’d go back to the Wraiths. Anyways, I’ll walk with you a ways.”

Immediately, Wes grasped Tycho’s arm and pulled him to his feet, then started tugging him out of the lounge and down the corridors. Tycho let himself be pulled, more surprised than anything else.

As Wes chattered about inane matters, Tycho felt a pang of guilt. There were days he didn’t know where he stood with Wes. They were old friends, certainly, but how much of that was driven solely by time and exposure? They’d never had the kind of bond Wes had with Hobbie, one that let them finish each other’s sentences and pull the other out of their comfort zone to try different things. Nor had they ever had the instinctive connection Wes had formed with Wedge, where Wes perfectly slotted himself into a supporting position with the full confidence of knowing it didn’t make Wedge think any less of him.

He truly did like Wes and greatly valued his friendship. But what did Wes get from him in turn? Tycho primarily gave him orders and tried to restrain him from excess when he started pranking people. It was hard not to imagine Wes finding him annoying or saw him as an impediment to having fun. Friendships require give and take, effort from both sides. Tycho knew he was failing to uphold his side of things.

Regardless of Tycho’s increasingly distress thoughts, Wes pulled him along to his quarters with great speed. Once Tycho had entered the door code, Wes grinned and pushed past him. “Need to pee, sorry. Gotta borrow your ‘fresher. Here, check out this insanely dull book Hobbie weirdly thought I’d like.”

Tycho caught the datapad Wes tossed at him before he hurriedly disappeared into the refresher. Well, if nothing else, he’d been distracted from his earlier stress, Tycho mused.

Sitting down on one of the small armchairs his quarters had come with, Tycho activated the ‘pad and pulled up the story Wes had been reading.It didn’t take long before his eyebrows had climbed up his forehead at the contents.

“I may need to rethink the whole promotion thing if colonels get hot drink machines,” Wes said a few minutes later. He emerged from the bathroom carrying two tea cups with a familiar hot beverage inside.

“Well, don’t get too excited,” Tycho replied, accepting the tea. “I brought that with me, along with the tea. The cups did come with the suite, though.”

He watched with interest as Wes sat down and gave the tea a cautious sip. He couldn’t think of the last time he’d seen Wes willingly drinking tea. “There’s something wrong with drinking wet tree leaves,” Wes muttered. He took another sip, a bit deeper this time. “It’s… not terrible,” he concluded.

“I’m surprised you aren’t demanding caf,” Tycho replied, taking a sip of his own beverage. For all Wes didn’t drink tea, he was good at preparing it.

“Eh, that’d be rude, especially since I’m imposing.” Wes grimaced slightly, then took another wary sip. “Hobbie’s all but been lying in wait to talk about this one, so I’m doing my best to avoid him for now.”

“It’s definitely rather… literary,” Tycho said.

“That’s one way to put it. Did you see the part where the actor is performing a dance?”

Laughing, Tycho glanced down at the datapad, skimming through the text. He had caught that moment. “Ah, yes.” He cleared his throat and began to read: “As the music played its sonorous tune, Burian wore his best look of despair. The sparkling green and orange lines of his costume glittered under the lights as he spun and wailed, each dizzying spin a meditation on the futility of existence and each cry a plea for mercy from an uncaring universe.”

“What the hell, Tycho?” Wes demanded. “Why in the name of everything green and good in the galaxy does Hobbie think I’ll like this?”

“It’s a completely mystery,” Tycho replied. “Thinking you’d like this is like assuming you like putting on formal Alderaanian visiting airs whenever you’re off duty.”

He should have realized Wes would hear a challenge in those words. After a brief moment where Wes processed his statement, he shifted. His posture changed as he shifted to more directly face Tycho, shoulders going back as he squared them over his hips. He brought his arms in, carefully angling the hand holding the tea cup and several fingers lifting slightly so that he held the thin stem with a much more delicate touch.

When Tycho started to laugh, Wes raised an imperious eyebrow. “Colonel, I do believe you are finding something humorous about this situation. I am rather put out that you would laugh so when truly, you should be moved to feel sympathy for my plight. Major Klivian is being most insensitive.”

He couldn’t help it. Wes’s posture was extremely formal, not in an Alderaanian fashion, but what he was fairly certain was a Taanabain version of social manners. He always forgot that, culturally, Taanab was much closer to Alderaan than many other planets. Corellia was a strange little bundle of restrained moral attitudes and a devil-may-care attitude, and Ralltiir a rambunctious, swift moving metropolis modeling itself after Coruscant’s cosmopolitan ways. Unlike those worlds, Taanab put great value in manners and proper speech, and even shared similar customs such as the use of charm signing and a few similar preferences concerning matter of dress.

Wes could only hold himself still for so long and his spine soon began to curve once more as he reset himself back to his normal way of sitting. “Don’t mistake dislike for inability,” Wes said, noticeable amusement in his voice.

“I would never,” Tycho replied. “If you want to drive Hobbie inside, just put those airs on for a while. I guarantee he’ll be beating down my door within an hour claiming you’ve been replaced by an evil clone.”

“And how would you answer that declaration?”

“Well, I certainly wouldn’t come tell you to stop being polite to everyone.”

Chuckling, Wes returned to his. Tycho resume flipping through the novel, reading out other bizarre and unintentionally hilarious sentences as he spotted them. It wasn’t long, though, before both cups were empty and Wes rose to leave.

“Keep it for now,” he said when Tycho offered him his datapad back. “I’ll get it from you at the morning briefing. For now, share in my suffering,” he added with a grin.

“Alright, then. Goodnight, Wes.”

“Night, Tycho.”

The novel kept him company for a little while longer as Tycho prepared for bed, feeling much more relaxed than before. It was only the next morning as he was sitting down to breakfast with Wedge that he had a realization.

“Something on your mind?” Wedge asked, when he noticed Tycho paused midway through a sip of his caf.

Tycho thought for a moment, considering how to explain. “I had a bit of rough night last night,” he finally said. “I was having trouble settling down, so I ended up taking a walk. I ran into Wes in the Rogues’ lounge and we ended up chatting in my quarters for almost an hour. I didn’t have any trouble falling asleep after he left.” He paused for a moment, suddenly conscious of the weight of Wes’s datapad in one of his pockets.”I remember thinking he was acting a bit subdued, but he still managed to distract me rather thoroughly. He did all that on purpose, didn’t he?”

Wedge chuckled. “Despite appearance, Wes can have a light touch, so to speak, when he wants to. I imagine he thought you looked rough and wanted to help you unwind.”

“I’m not sure if it’s good or bad that he doesn’t use those skills on a regular basis,” Tycho said wonderingly.

“Was there anything in particular bothering you last night?”

Pausing, Tycho considered what, if anything, he was willing to share. “Well, amongst everything, I found myself worrying about whether or not I’m an adequate friend or not. Specifically with Wes, I mean.”

Wedge looked startled for a moment, then laughed. “Well, as someone once told me, if you’re worrying about being a good friend, chances are you’re doing an excellent job already. But, Tycho, if you’re really worried about it? Ask Wes. That’s the kind of topic he usually takes seriously right away. I think you’ll be surprised by the answer.”

It turned out that Tycho didn’t have time to ask Wes directly, but he did end up putting a message on his datapad before returning it. That evening, he got a reply:

_Tycho, you goob, of course you’re a good friend. It’s ridiculous you have to ask, but since you did, here are some of the friend things you do (that go above and beyond your secret and not-so-secret colonel things):_

  * _Keep an even playing field for me and Hobbie_


  * _Keep us all safe and steady_


  * _You have our backs_


  * _You encourage us all to rise above our bad habits_


  * _That thing you do with a wine bottle and a cloth napkin is funny_



_Now stop fretting and being all mopey. I need your help._

_I’m pretty sure now that Hobbie’s been having a laugh at me with these ridiculous books (the newest one is worse than the last one, if you can imagine). I’m going to do exactly what you suggested last night and then some. Get Wedge in on this if you can. I want every Rogue and other pilot we can get on board to be on their best behavior with the most gracious of airs in starting with Day Shift in three days._

_Laugh at me trying to force myself through literary dreck on his behalf? Nuh-uh. This time, Hobbie has it coming._

A lingering tightness in his chest loosened as the letter continued, going into further details about the prank Wes wanted to play on Hobbie. For once, Tycho was inclined to play along. It certainly had all the needed elements to be fun. And the mockery of formal matters would go a long way to making the _Lusankya_ feel less oppressive.

Wes was a good friend. It was reassuring to know he thought the same about Tycho.


End file.
